but placing a convincing avatar in a persuasive yet manipulable environment was designed for an economic purpose: getting young people to save. >> this study looked at taking an 18-year-old college kid or a and transforms them into the body of someone who's older. >> reporter: specifically, into the body or future self of a 65- year-old, which in my case, the study was designed to see if bonding with their senior selves would cause kids to salt away money for retirement. if i'm a kid looking at the older version of me, the idea is that i'm making a non-conscious connection that will stay with me and change my behavior. >> exactly. you can tell someone you will be older some day but the visceral experience of seeing your image in the mirror as older than you are causes this deep connection to your future self and this is what drives future savings behavior. >> reporter: in fact, in a 2011 paper, bailenson and others reported that those who had seen their future selves in the virtual mirror subsequently put twice as much money into a savings account as those who hadn't. and the research co